The woman turned slowly and accepted the bowl.
Kate had just turned her back to speak to Jeb when the patient named Ginger drew back her bowl.
“Kate, look out!” Jeb yelled. He shoved Angel out of the doorway.
The bowl of grits splattered across Kate’s back. Kate turned around, mad as bees.
“Are you all right?” Jeb asked.
“Ginger, you know you’ll be in trouble for this!” Kate wiped grits from the back of her arm.
Ginger began to wail, openmouthed. It made the other two ladies laugh. They fell across the bed giggling. Kate stood watching them laughing like hyenas. Then she broke out laughing herself. Ginger stopped her cries and began to lick stray grits off her fingers.
Behind Angel, Jeb heard a soft moan. He turned and saw a woman staring at them. She had appeared out of the blue. Her soft visage, with dark eyes as round as Ida May’s, was sad and deep as a mountain cavern.
Angel followed Jeb’s gaze with her own. Her face paled. “Momma? Momma?” She stepped toward her mother.
Thorne Welby gripped her hospital gown and pulled it together in the front. She backed away and whimpered.
“It’s me, Angel, Momma.”
Kate stepped out into the hall still dripping with Ginger’s grits. “Thorne, don’t act like that. I told you it was time you saw family again besides me.”
Thorne turned and ran up B Corrider into a room, slamming the door behind her.
A soft sob spilled out of Angel.
Jeb took her in his arms. “You’ll get through this, Biggest. Don’t cry. I’ll walk you to see your momma.”
17
Jeb sat out on a concrete bench on the hospital lawn. He had taken his Bible out of the truck and read the same Scripture four times before closing it up altogether. The notes from the sermon that he would not be preaching this Sunday marked a chapter in the book of Psalms. Gracie had spoken well of it. It would have to wait.
Kate had had to exercise her influence over Thorne, coaxing her out from under a quilt and out into the room, where she agreed to sit without crying. Angel had tried to put up a good front, but Jeb saw the shine in her eyes that said a small dam was about to break loose. He had excused himself, believing Thorne might behave better if his unfamiliar presence disappeared from her nervous sight.
He felt a tug inside him pulling first one way and then another. If he drove away and left the Welbys alone to work things out, he would not be able to rid himself of the image of Angel sitting helplessly next to her mother, unable to coax even a familiar word from her. He imagined her sitting under the counsel of cousin Effie, who would explain the way of the world to her—do whatever any old degenerate tells you and end up worn out like an old dress and tossed up in the attic like a secondhand relic. Effie’s gaggle of friends would no doubt bring with them a philosophy of paper-thin magnitude.
He did not doubt Kate’s love for her family—just her naiveté regarding a kid’s defenselessness to the world’s elements. She was like a mother bear asleep at the mouth of the cave, oblivious to the snakes that slithered past toward her cubs.
Two women sat on a blanket several yards from Jeb. They passed magazines back and forth until they began to argue over one. They jerked it back and forth in a tug-of-war before finally falling to the ground rolling, wrestling, and shrieking. An attendant ran from under a tree where he had stopped to take a smoke and untangled the patients.
Jeb thought of the pulpit that waited for him back in Nazareth. With the pastorate, although meager of pay, came the growing respect of the people. Even the boys around Snooker’s Pool Hall who once would not give him the time of day had started waving at him from inside the doorway. His days as a con had started to fade from minds like the evening sky fading on Marvelous Crossing. Best of all, the contempt that had radiated from Fern Coulter for the past year had softened, at least by a small measure, the last few times they had spoken. Fern seemed moved by his intervention in Angel’s waywardness.
And then there was Winona Mills, whose interest was growing like a cloud of perch beneath the surface of the lake. She was a fine mess of fish, the way he figured things.
He shook his head at the thoughts stirring inside him. After a year of study and commitment to the gospel, the old Nubey was rising from the dead again. He breathed a prayer and tucked his Bible under his arm. It was time to see if Angel had found any signs of life coming from the general direction of her mother.
Dr. Eisenbein, an import from Germany, examined Thorne while Angel waited outside the door. Angel could hear her mother responding, sometimes with a “yes” or “no” and sometimes not at all. Aunt Kate had remained at Thorne’s side only because of her employee status on the floor. When she once ventured to ask Eisenbein a simple question, he barked at her like a guard dog. Kate had fallen silent for the remainder of the examination.
Angel paced back and forth on the green-and-once-white tiles. She hated the smell of the place and the noises heard up and down the hallways. She decided the only other place a person could hear such things was in hell itself. One woman lying out of sight on one of the mattresses down the hallway had a counting habit; she counted everything out loud—the wheels on the medicine carts, the floor tiles, and the buttons on a passing nurse’s uniform.
Angel found a window to stand by and watched the passing cars beyond the gate and the birds flying overhead. She decided that no matter how bad things got, she would never end up in a sanatorium. It came to her that her mother had given up on hope. That was what had ended her.
Kate stepped outside the door and called for Angel. Angel came into the room and found that the German doctor had left. Her mother huddled in a heap on the bed. She looked at Angel, and Angel could not decipher what she was thinking.
“I hate that man. He’s like talking to the devil. Maybe he is the devil,” said Kate.
“Aunt Kate, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Momma.”
“Sweet child, you can talk to her now.” Kate opened the window shades.
“Just the two of us, I mean.”
Kate put her hand to her mouth, apologetic. She quietly left the room. Angel settled herself in a chair, took a deep breath, and said, “Momma, Willie’s so big now, you wouldn’t believe. Ida May’s in school and is learning to read. Jeb helps her to read. Did I tell you I taught Jeb to read? Can you believe it? Me?”
Thorne gripped the neck of her gown with both hands as though she feared it might fall off if she didn’t. She spoke suddenly, her face intent on Angel. “Yesterday mornin’, first thing, I heard a commotion like I never heard before. They had piled up those old mattresses out there for the ones that they don’t have room fer. They was draggin’ out one mattress after another, and then I saw her.”
“Her who, Momma?” Angel was surprised her momma had finally decided to talk.
“One of the patients. They had dragged her and thrown her in the mattress pile and left her there for too long. No one even noticed her on the mattress when they was stacking them up. I asked one of the nurses if she was all right. But that old nurse just laughed and looked at me like I was a fool for asking. She told me that patient had died. What folks think is funny around here’s not funny anywhere else. That’s the thing about it.”
“Momma, we have to tell someone.”
“Won’t do any good. I figure they’ll toss me on the pile one day like I was nothing more than an old blanket. I’ll be the funny story of the week.”
“Listen to you, Momma. You can talk.”
“’Course I can talk. I’m crazy, not mute.” Thorne drew up her thin legs and slid them beneath the blanket. Then she smiled when Angel laughed at what she said.
“I miss you more than you can know. If I was to tell you all we’ve been through since Daddy sent us away with Lana, you’d not believe it.” Angel settled herself on the end of the bed.
Thorne sat up, took two gulping breaths, and said, “Kate didn’t tell me that. That he sent you with
that Lana. Your daddy knew she wasn’t no ’count. But he didn’t care about all that. Long’s he had someone to keep him warm at night, that’s all he cared about.”
“What did the doctor say? Can you leave soon?”
“Lana told him lies about me, things your daddy knew to be lies. But he kept seeing her. I tried to shoot her one night, pick her off like a crow on a fence post. But they stopped me.”
Uncle Dew had apparently not told Angel everything the morning they took Momma away.
Angel started to ask her again when she might be able to leave. But the distant horizon of the hills drew her mother’s attention. She stopped answering any of Angel’s questions. The fingers on her right hand began to tremble. “Ssshhh!” She made several shushing noises like a child cowering under a bed waiting for an intruder to leave.
Kate came into the room. “She hasn’t eaten since yesterday. That’s the problem. She won’t feed herself. It’s enough to make me want to yell at her. But that don’t do no good, neither. When she gets upset, she won’t eat for days. Some of the nurses took to forcing food down her, but I wouldn’t have it. So they let me feed her as long as she stays calm.” Kate leaned toward her with her hands resting on her knees and said, “Thorne, time for breakfast.”
Angel left the room, unwilling to see her mother fed like Ida May when she was sick. Her mother had not asked one thing about her or Willie or even her youngest girl. Angel saw Jeb standing at the end of the hallway. “I want to leave,” she said.
Jeb opened the door for her. He did not ask her any questions on the way to the truck or even after they motored away. Instead he drove past Kate’s and straight to the boardinghouse. In a quiet way, without looking at her, he told her to go inside and get her things. “We’re going back to Nazareth,” was all that he said.
The horizon was soda-cracker white, salted with clouds but no rain. The truck blew a tire and Jeb had no choice but to wait for the closest filling station to open the next morning. They walked for two miles and then hitched a ride to an old motel just outside Malvern. The owner of the place told Jeb that for two dollars he would give them a ride back to the truck. Jeb paid him for the night. He gave Angel the only bed in the room, a rickety iron bed made for one sleeper, and made his own bed on the floor out of two thin blankets given to him by the motel keeper’s wife. A picture of a farm silo had been hung on a nail on one wall, but Angel peeked behind it to find it was hiding a hole in the plaster. She combed the braids out of her hair and went into the washroom to dress for the night. After she had slipped under the covers and turned off the lamp next to her bed, Jeb said aloud in the darkness, “You doing all right?”
“Tired. Kind of mad, I guess. I lie awake every night thinking about my momma. I always imagined we were thinking about each other.” She fell quiet.
“When she laid eyes on you the first time, I saw something. You’ve changed a lot, I would imagine, since the last time she saw you. But once she knew it was you, Angel, an old spark kindled inside of her.”
“I wish I could have been born into a normal family. Like one of those girls back in Nazareth. One where everybody has the same last name in the family and all the kids have the same momma and daddy. They all bow for prayer at dinner and then the momma feeds them all they want to eat.”
“Lots of pain in most of the families in Nazareth. Same in Little Rock, Texarkana, and all the way up in Oklahoma. Not too many families have the perfect way of life, Angel. Daddies, sometimes they leave the mommas. Or one of them dies. Kids get sick. Only one place is perfect. It’s not here on earth.”
“Momma didn’t even hug me.”
Jeb heard a sniffle. “Be thankful she’s got a sister to look after her.”
“What I’m trying to say is that life’s been so hard for me. For my brother and sister. I can’t see any of us turning out well.” The bedsprings squeaked beneath Angel’s shifting weight.
“You’ll turn out better than the whole lot of Nazareth, Angel.”
“Sometimes I thought I could hear my mother whispering to me at night. Now I know it’s a crock. Every time I have a good thought about how I might turn out, how do I know it’s not just another lie I’m telling myself so I’ll feel better?”
“You have to decide that from now on you’re going to climb out of the past and leave it behind. Every step you take away from the past is a move in the right direction. You can feel good about that.”
“Like when you decided to stop conning everyone and be who you said you was?”
Jeb was silent for a moment and then answered quietly, “Same thing.”
“You ever want to go back to your old ways, Jeb?”
“All the time.”
“But you don’t do it.”
“It would be like stepping back into my past. That’s the place that almost done me in. I want to go away from it, not back to it.”
“What if you make a decision and you think it’s taking you forward, but instead you go two steps backward?”
“It happens. Once I realize it was a mistake, I turn around and go in the direction that leads me ahead.”
“Things aren’t always clear, though. Like the way Reverend Gracie talks about hearing from God. How does he know it’s not just his own voice, and not God’s, telling him how to live?”
“Some men, great men of God, live their whole lives never knowing for sure if they’re hearing God’s voice. But they have one thing to guide them.”
“You’re fixing to preach again.”
“Jesus left me something of his to read. I learn things that teach me how to live and how to tell if I’m making the right decision or not. When I get away from that and start making up my answers as I go along, then I get in trouble.”
“Do you hate yourself for it?”
“Sometimes. Then I get up and go again.”
“The good preachers don’t stumble, do they, Jeb?”
“Same as everyone else.”
“But sometimes you have to live with the trouble you caused the rest of your life.” She spoke like a second wind had come into her and she was awake and ready to talk. “Like you and Fern Coulter.”
“Angel, it’s late. We have to get up and get the truck running again. Don’t start with Fern Coulter at midnight.”
“Kids in school say you spend your time running after Miss Coulter while Winona Mills spends her time running after you.”
Jeb didn’t answer. He rolled over and pulled the window shade down to keep the moonlight from striking him square in the face and closed his eyes. When he finally heard Angel’s steady breathing, he sat up and went outside for a walk. He could not sleep with women in his head.
A boy not much older than Angel helped Jeb roll the truck the rest of the way into the filling station. The patch over his pocket said “Ralph,” even though the station owner called him “Coffee.” Jeb figured it might have something to do with the color of his teeth. But Coffee could patch a tire faster than a cat on grease, and as he worked he talked to Jeb about how most of the businesses outside Malvern had been hit hard in the last year or so. He just kept patching tires, he said, and pumping gas, and somehow he had helped keep food on his momma’s table. He talked of how his uncle was wounded in World War I and had never been right since. The whole time he talked, a bone-skinny cat wound around Jeb’s feet.
“Anyplace to pick up breakfast around here?” asked Jeb.
“All the restaurants around here closed, the last one six months ago. They’s a farmer up the road toward Hot Springs. He’ll sell you all the apples you can eat and some bread.”
“I’m sick of apples,” said Angel. “They sell them on every corner in Nazareth and all over Little Rock. You’d think the whole world’s gone crazy on apples.”
“Take these,” said Coffee. He handed a grease-stained brown sack to Angel.
Angel looked into the bag. “Biscuits. I’m sorry to be complaining and carrying on so much. I can’t take your breakfast.”
“
My old lady makes too many as it is. She’s trying to fatten me up and marry me off.”
Angel handed Jeb a biscuit and ate one herself.
Angel talked all the way from Malvern through the roads that led away to Hot Springs and then as they rolled along getting closer to Nazareth. Jeb finally saw a roadside café busy with automobiles pulling in and out of the parking lot. He pulled in and they found a place at the bar to eat. Angel ordered a hamburger and a Coke.
“Best burger I’ve had in a while,” said Jeb after a moment.
“I want to know why you’re all of a sudden Mr. Moneybags. You tipped that boy that fixed your tire a whole dollar. You just the big tipper now, ain’t you? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re running liquor, but that would be crazy. People can get their whiskey now in the store.”
“I told you I was working for the bank. That should be enough. Nothing wrong with running papers for the bank.” Jeb salted his potatoes.
“Depends on the kind of papers you’re running.”
“Bank papers.”
“Things Mr. Mills don’t want to handle himself, like foreclosing on people and stuff like that.”
“Or offers that they want to make to help people out of their troubles.”
“What people?”
“Waitress, could you fill this girl’s glass again so she’ll stop running off at the mouth?” Jeb let out a sigh that drew the eyes of people seated on either side of them.
“Does Asa know about this deal you give to his wife?”
“I should have dropped you off in Little Rock and drove away.”
“I knew it.”
“The Hoppers are in trouble, Angel. They missed their payments on their place for too long. Banks can’t stay in business if people don’t pay their bills. Mills wants to help them out of their troubles, but whenever he tries, those Hopper boys pull a gun on him. How Christian is that?”
“Hopper boys don’t claim to be Christian. So are they going to get to keep their land?”
Nazareth's Song Page 17